INDIVIDUALISM STRONGER AT
THE CLOSE OF A DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION
THAN AT OTHER PERIODS

THE PERIOD when the construction of democratic society upon the ruins
of an aristocracy has just been completed is especially that at which this
isolation of men from one another and the selfishness resulting from it
most forcibly strike the observer. Democratic communities not only contain
a large number of independent citizens, but are constantly filled with
men who, having entered but yesterday upon their independent condition,
are intoxicated with their new power. They entertain a presumptuous confidence
in their own strength, and as they do not suppose that they can henceforward
ever have occasion to claim the assistance of their fellow creatures, they
do not scruple to show that they care for nobody but themselves.

An aristocracy seldom yields without a protracted struggle, in the course
of which implacable animosities are kindled between the different classes
of society. These passions survive the victory, and traces of them may
be observed in the midst of the democratic confusion that ensues. Those
members of the community who were at the top of the late gradations of
rank cannot immediately forget their former greatness; they will long regard
themselves as aliens in the midst of the newly composed society. They look
upon all those whom this state of society has made their equals as oppressors,
whose destiny can excite no sympathy; they have lost sight of their former
equals and feel no longer bound to their fate by a common interest; each
of them, standing aloof, thinks that he is reduced to care for himself
alone. Those, on the contrary, who were formerly at the foot of the social
scale and who have been brought up to the common level by a sudden revolution
cannot enjoy their newly acquired independence without secret uneasiness;
and if they meet with some of their former superiors on the same footing
as themselves, they stand aloof from them with an expression of triumph
and fear.

It is, then, commonly at the outset of democratic society that citizens
are most disposed to live apart. Democracy leads men not to draw near to
their fellow creatures; but democratic revolutions lead them to shun each
other and perpetuate in a state of equality the animosities that the state
of inequality created.

The great advantage of the Americans is that they have arrived at a
state of democracy without having to endure a democratic revolution, and
that they are born equal instead of becoming so.